It was supposed to be a festive birthday party. The European Community turned 20 last week, and leaders of its nine member states celebrated the anniversary by gathering in the damask-lined hall atop Rome's Capitoline Hill where the unique organization was born.
But the mood in the hall was sullen. After the initial round of speeches, the delegates could agree only on overall aims. No amount of brave words could hide the fact that the lofty goals of the Treaty of Rome seem more distant today than a decade ago.
But what most depressed the Community leaders was their worry that something very fundamental may be going wrong in Western Europe and that their political careers may be abruptly shortened because of it. There was certainly enough evidence last week to spur such apprehensions. Items:
> British Prime Minister James Callaghan narrowly averted a defeat in Commons that would have forced him to resign and call new elections. Just minutes before facing a no-confidence vote demanded by Tory Leader Margaret Thatcher (TIME, March 28), Callaghan concluded a deal with the Liberal Party's David Steel, thus assuring the Labor government's survival; this actually left the P.M. in a stronger parliamentary position than he has enjoyed for months. The price that Steel extracted was a Liberal voice in the government's legislative program in order to push such Liberal pet policies as devolution for Scotland and proportional balloting in the election of deputies to the European Assembly. With the votes of the 13 Liberal M.P.s, Callaghan's Laborites were able to defeat the opposition—Tories, Scottish and Welsh nationalists, some Ulster Unionists and a sprinkling of other minor parties—by a margin of 322 to 298.
The new Lab-Lib bloc was immediately attacked by many of the 70 members of the Labor Party's left-wing Tribune Group, which fears that some favorite socialist schemes will be vetoed by the Liberals. But last week's deal binds the two parties only until the end of the current parliamentary session in November. By then, Britain's economy is expected to improve, and Callaghan might be willing to risk a national election. Today, all opinion polls agree the Tories would win an election—although once in power, they would find it nearly impossible to deal with the unions and Labor's left wing, which even Callaghan has a hard time controlling.
> Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti managed last week to keep his minority Christian Democratic government afloat—but only just. The leaders of the Communists and other left-wing parties indicated that they would end their tacit support of Andreotti's government if he tried to impose new austerity measures on the country to qualify for a $530 million loan from the International Monetary Fund. The Premier could scarcely ignore their warning: he has been able to govern for the past six months only because the opposition has abstained from voting on key issues in the parliament. To save his government, the Premier promised to renegotiate certain conditions attached to the IMF loan. In addition, the Christian Democrats agreed to Communists' and Socialists' demands for greater collaboration on government policies.